Scoble Troble

Oh my god!  Windows Vista might not ship for another 10 months!  Whatever will I do in the interim?  My new liver will only run on Windows Vista!

Today, the press reported that windows Vista would ship very late and needed a 60% rewrite. My first response to this was "Wow, sixty percent is a lot!"  About 20 minutes later my brain checked in and said, "That seems nearly impossible."

Who is the rubber clown that bloggers will punch for this?  Scoble!  And punch away they did.  I have comment number 49 in the pile-on.

Scoble says in his post that 60% of the code is ludicrous and that there's no way that would ever be possible.  This is followed up by a large number of posts which, if viewed dispassionately, all equate to "Yeah, well you still suck."

Which isn't too helpful.

My take on this is that Microsoft is not an agile shop and they are building a very very complex system that has to satisfy everyones dreams of the future and all the encumbrances of the past.  It's not an undertaking for the faint of heart. 

There are obvious comments about how Linux is superior because it doesn't have to deal with all the dependencies that Windows does.  I see that as a red herring.  Windows isn't Linux.  Windows is crappy at doing some things, but really good at others.  Linux is really crappy at some and better at others as well.  There is room on this planet for multiple operating systems.

Due to the complex nature of the operating system and the waterfall approach to development employed in that division of Microsoft, it makes perfect sense that there would be schedule slippage.  Windows isn't a system that can be easily released iteratively - especially with a major version difference.

So I say, cut the Microsofties some slack.  It's not like they were excited to put it off for a year.

Photo: R Beaty

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger » Where the heck is Scoble?

Comments

[David Anderson]

Oooh, you Seattlite suck up ;-)

[Jim Benson]

Yep, I've already cashed my payola check.